Velvet buck in January

Had this buck and a shed buck at 15 yards last night. I had a statewide tag in my pocket, but I had no intentions of using it on this guy. Thought I was seeing things when I first saw him pop up on my trail cam about a month ago.

These two came in with a group of 3 does and it's the same group that have traveled together recently past my trail cam. The bucks broke off and bedded down 50 yds from me for over an hour. It's interesting that a forkhorn came down the trail near them and then started acting aggressive towards this buck and actually ran him off. The shed buck just stood there the whole time and eventually the velvet buck came back. I don't think he's an antlered doe, mainly because of his body size. But he was also running with a buck and he postured up towards the forky at first, but with no fighting head gear he turned tail. Thoughts?

A number of years ago I was hunting in Wyoming. One of the guys in our group shot a mule deer in full velvet. It was the first week of October. When he rolled it over to gut the deer there were no testicles. Not sure if it was a birth defect or some type of injury but the lack of testosterone was what we came up with also.